Systematic rationality only works if you do limit inference, because nothing is really truly true. If you take true-enough-for-this-context as “truly true,” you infer way too much. If you take it as “false,” you can’t infer anything.
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David Chapman Retweeted John Nerst
Effective use of rational inference requires “circumscription assumptions,” which say what sorts of considerations count as relevant in a particular situation, for particular purposes.https://twitter.com/everytstudies/status/989602997264142336 …
David Chapman added,
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The term “circumscription” was introduced by John McCarthy as a key move in the logicist program of AI (which he founded). You can’t use logic in the real world without it or something equivalent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circumscription_(logic) …
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The *capacity* to limit inference to a narrow set of considerations is a prerequisite to rationality. But besides that, there is the *propensity*, which seems to be an aspect of temperament, which varies even among those with the capacity.
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There seems to be something of a continuum from high-decouplers to low-decouplers even within high-IQ people who can think rationally when necessary. “Painfully oblivious geeks” are those at one extreme. (I’m close to that, at time at least!)
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Insightful discussion of the high/low decoupling continuum by
@drossbucket, who is near the middle, despite having a physics PhD and working in software development. The comments on this post are well-worth reading too!https://drossbucket.wordpress.com/2018/04/08/the-cognitive-decoupling-elite/ …2 replies 5 retweets 16 likesShow this thread -
Systematic rationality operates *within* circumscription assumptions: a set of principles about what will count as relevant to the reasoning process. The obliviousness of oblivious geeks is in taking circumscription as given, or fixed, not to be questioned or re-examined.
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Choice of circumscription assumptions is a key form of *meta-rational* reasoning. That is: deciding what will count as relevant is a major part of determining *how* rationality will be applied in a particular situation.
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So, to summarize my understanding of
@everytstudies’s analysis of the Harris-Klein debate: We could take Klein as being unable or unwilling to apply rationality (which requires circumscription) at all. Possibly true, but uncharitable. Alternatively…1 reply 1 retweet 5 likesShow this thread
I didn’t listen to it, so I don’t have any opinion… I was interested only several layers of meta up from the actual discussion
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